UMAC ICOM’s Two Horizons project, “two-way museology, a cross institutional and multi-knowledge system exploration”.
At a 2020 “Being Collected” seminar at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, Professor Gaye Sculthorpe estimated there were some 39,000 Indigenous Australian objects in UK museums alone. This is just one segment of relocated cultural material in institutional collections resulting from colonial era collecting practices.
There is a broader context for this translocation that covers the entire Asia-Pacific region. Furthermore, while this material has been decontextualized by removal and recontextualised in museum systems, because of their knowledge-generating capacity much material has also ended up in university collections. University collections are not always recognised as museums under the ICOM definition and therefore not necessarily bounded by the ICOM Code of Ethics.
This project follows on from the UMAC project that in 2022 produced the guidelines on restitution and repatriation of items from university museums and collections now being adopted by universities around the world. We also respectfully adopt the language and symbolism of Teresia Kieuea Teaiwa, the great Kiribati poet in ‘Te onauti’ (Kiribati for Flying Fish), where it is noted that fish only ever see one horizon, but the flying fish see two.
Fish out of water: fly.
Fish, out of water, see two horizons.
The project takes the starting point that displaced collections and university museums have the potential to be windows on multiple knowledge systems. The project also builds on the publication of a special issue of the University Museums and Collections Journal (scheduled for later in 2023) where repatriation and restitution stories involving university museums and collections have been collaboratively documented as case studies involving at least two perspectives. It aligns with the ICOM strategic focus area of decolonisation and is viewed as an important step forward in the evolution of museums from being points of cultural authority to being parts of a network of cultural agency.
It has long been known that material engagements of object-based encounters can provide cross-disciplinary bridges. This multi-partner research project is an exploration of how different forms of knowledge can be embedded into the materiality of objects and how different knowledge systems can be represented in the diversity of museum work programs. We know there are many museums, both within the higher education sector and outside of it who are developing these practices. The project builds on UMAC’s return and restitution work.
The project consists of a series of workshops, and other research-based events which explore the question of bringing multiple knowledge systems into a variety of museum work. The funding from ICOM supports ensuring we have both expertise in museum practice and cultural knowledge holders engaged in the process.
Roadmap
2023 project launch scheduled for Canberra at the Australian National University after the UMAC 2023 conference in Sydney was cancelled because of an outbreak of COVID.
Material from the UMAC 2023 conference to be incorporated as resources.
Presentations made to a number of project partners.
2024 University of Canberra, UMAC supported Indigenous protocols, looking at all aspects of Indigenous collections in higher education. Voicing the Living Archive: Working with First Nations Collections in Higher Education
https://www.canberra.edu.au/events/Home/Event/462892
2025 2Horizons
Presentations at the American University of Sharjah Library as part of UMAC’s ICs Day.
2026 OBL focussed workshop and seminar for the next Inclusive Museum Conference in Sydney next year.
https://onmuseums.com/2026-conference
Resources (initial listing)
Exhibition work, University of Melbourne
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-30/65-000-years-a-short-history-potter-museum-of-art-marcia-langton/105336112
On the Indigenous archival right of reply and the use of Indigenous Knowledge Protocols
https://livinghistories.newcastle.edu.au/pages/rightofreply
Reconceptualising the teaching of natural history in a way that changes how natural history collections are stored, archived and used on campus, the University of New England. Geoconservation article published.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/386573952_More_than_Museums_Care_for_Natural_and_Cultural_Heritage_in_Australia_Original_Research
Media researchers developing VR and AR experiences for museums that introduce Indigenous epistemologies to non-Indigenous audiences
https://indigimatha-prelaunch-site.squarespace.com/indigimatha-copy-1
At the UMAC Annual General Meeting on January 26, 2026 it was announced that the new UMAC Board were discontinuing this project and returning unspent funds to ICOM.